Marines kick off war games with Japanese soldiers at Camp Pendleton

U.S. Marine Corps

U.S. Marines joined soldiers from the Japan Ground Self Defense Force to kick off Exercise Iron Fist at Camp Pendleton on Friday. The annual war games will pair elements of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit with Japan's Western Army Infantry Regiment during the training.

U.S. Marines joined soldiers from the Japan Ground Self Defense Force to kick off Exercise Iron Fist at Camp Pendleton on Friday. The annual war games will pair elements of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit with Japan's Western Army Infantry Regiment during the training. (U.S. Marine Corps)

Despite overseas tensions triggered by a nuclear-armed North Korea’s missile tests and China’s territorial claims in the Western Pacific, Japanese and American forces kicked off war games on Friday in California.

More than 350 Japanese personnel are slated to participate in the Iron Fist exercises this year, nearly three times as many in 2006 when the annual bilateral exercises began.

The monthlong war games will pit a fictional enemy force on a made-up island against Japan’s Western Army Infantry Regiment and elements of America’s 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit — including the Navy’s amphibious warship Rushmore, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, commandos from 1st Reconnaissance Battalion and grunts from 1st Battalion, 4th Marines.

The maneuvers will sprawl across Camp Pendleton, San Clemente Island, 29 Palms and Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, with armored amphibious vehicles and helicopters carrying the troops.

“We’re just trying to improve the Japanese amphibious capabilities,” said 11th MEU commander Col. Fridrik Fridriksson at a news conference following the exercise’s opening ceremonies at Camp Pendleton’s foggy Del Mar Parade Field.

It will be the final Iron Fist before Tokyo launches its Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade in March, the first unit of its kind since Japan’s defeat in World War II.

Like a Marine expeditionary unit, it’s designed to land 2,100 troops from the sea and defeat an entrenched enemy through combined air, artillery and infantry combat.

The brigade was created in response to Beijing’s 2013 declaration of an air control zone over the Senkaku Islands, which China claims as its indisputable territory. Seized at the end of World War II, the United States transferred the uninhabited atolls east of Taiwan to Japan in 1972.

It’s not the only training Marines and Tokyo’s soldiers conduct together. Both nations hold extensive ground exercises throughout the year in Japan and, less frequently, in Guam and Hawaii, plus naval maneuvers across the region — sometimes shadowed by Chinese spy ships.

In his opening scripted remarks, Col. Ryuji Toyota, the Western Army Infantry Regiment’s skipper, pointed to a North Korean military armed with ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a potential threat, too.

Toyota declined to speak to reporters after the ceremony, and Fridriksson downplayed power politics in the volatile region.

“This is one of those types of things that when the U.S. and Japan stand together and show how well we work together, it’s not a threat in any way to any country,” said Fridriksson, who took the helm of the 11th MEU on Oct. 27 after commanding Task Force Al Asad in Iraq through much of 2016.

“It’s showing that we’re an absolute ally, that we’re going to stand toe-to-toe and we’ll stand as partners. And that shouldn’t be perceived as anything threatening.”

Fridriksson hopes that his Marines learn a few Japanese phrases while they befriend their allies during the training. He said that he’s already discovered a few planning innovations from his Western Army Infantry Regiment’s counterparts and will incorporate them into Marine practices.

“We learn from each other. It’s not just us teaching,” he said. “We’re learning as much from them as they are from us.”

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Incident involved amphibious training at the sprawling North County base. (Courtesy of Fox 5 San Diego)

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